Vimy Ridge

Out of our Amiens hotel early, an adieu to the Amiens Cathedral, our companion for two days and who’s shadow we dined on pizza the night before.

I head down the street to the parking garage, picking up breakfast for two on the way, and then to the hotel to load luggage into our trusty SUV.

We head northeast, destination Arras. ?Google Maps sends us on a course paralleling yesterday’s route.

Buildings here are red brick, pointed with white mortar and edging, one to two stories high. This is working country, each village featuring the prerequisite church with steeple.

We pass countless cemeteries, a reminder of how close we still are to the frontlines of a 100 years ago.

We were headed for Carriere Wellington, a museum showcasing the extensive tunnel systems under the east side of Arras. Google Earth takes us by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Centre, where work continues on not just maintaining the hundreds of cemeteries in the area, but in forensic work, trying to find out about the many new soldiers remains still discovered each year. You can tour the facility, but our time is short.

We reach Wellington but unfortunately the next tour of the vast tunnels isn’t until 3 PM. We need to be many miles north by that time. We head north after a quick lunch, off to a place called Vimy Ridge, just north of town.

The drive north of Arras is through flat country. Focused on the road, I still can see familiar names within 5 minutes of leaving Arras. We hang a right and enter the Vimy Ridge park lot. You can see the trenches and shell holes, but like at Beaumont Hamel, the ground is covered in green grass. We pop into the visitor’s centre and are greeted by the enthusiastic summer students. I mention I’m tracing the path of some Albertans from Edmonton. They immediate say I need to talk to Joe, a student with ties in Edmonton and a fan of the 49th Battalion, the same battalion many of the chaps my grandfather signed up with, served in. Joe won’t be available for a while, so we head up the hill towards the monument.

Vimy Ridge is Canadian soil. The land was gifted by the people of France to Canada. The monument was finished just before the start of the Second World War. The names of Canadian soldiers without a marked grave, lost in France, are listed here. Like at Beaumont Hamel, the site is fenced off because of the risk of unexploded ordnance, the sheep again doing their duty, a few stragglers bleating a sheeplike “wait for me” to their friends.

In some places trees have been allowed to regrow, and they seem oddly out of place jutting out the sides, tops, and bottoms of trench lines. On top of the hill, there are no trees, just the pock marked ground and the white twin-towered monument.

Vimy was the best and worst day in the history of the Canadian Armed Forces. Not at D-Day, not at Dieppe, not on the Somme or at Passchendaele were so many soldiers lost on one day.

We can’t go directly to the monument; they have a portable crane on site inspecting the structures. So, we walk around and take a look at what it was all about.

The Douai plain stretches to the east for miles and miles. The view is drunken, you can’t take it all in. This was the prize, an unobstructed view of the enemy rear lines. In the distance the detritus of a century of coal mining. Slag heads, mountains of mine waste piled high for decades off in the distance, stating for all this is coal country. The enemy could pull back in other parts of France, but here they dug in, intent on mining the back gold under their feet.

We approach the monument, safe to do so now, and stop at its foot, the location of a tomblike sculpture. I leave my little Canada pin behind on the coffin top.

Around the base of the Vimy monument are the lost soldiers’ names, as per usual in the army, listed by rank. I see a few with my surname.

We climb the steps and get an even better view of the prize paid for with 9000 Canadian casualties.

Today is a holiday. We see French families, with their small children, here visiting the site. It’s humbling to think that they would come to honour Canadians.

We head back down the hill and check back in at the visitor centre. Joe’s here! He takes us towards a real treat, a personal tour of the Grange Subway, one of many constructed to bring men and materials up across the flat plain, safely out of the prying eyes of the enemy on top of Vimy Ridge. Grange Subway is special, it’s been preserved, and it is the subway the blokes I’m following would have taken up to the frontlines. Graffiti covers the walls, we can see a 42, from the 42nd Battalion, a rudimentary maple leaf, and, maybe not surprising, what looks like German graffiti. It’s rumoured they toured the subway after they captured the area in 1940.

Back on the surface we say our goodbyes and head north again.

I have a personal pledge I need to fulfill.

Dud Alley Cemetery is located north of Vimy and west of Lens. The Canadians captured Hill 70 near Lens in August 1917.

West of Lens is Loos, scene of an epic, forgotten, battle in Sept/Oct 1915 that brought down the British Government and caused England to get serious about wartime production.

Harry Coulson, the younger brother of my grandmother, was serving with the Sherwood Foresters, when they charged across an open field on Oct. 13, 1915, attacking a German strongpoint. He never made it.

We went looking for his memorial at Dud Alley Cemetery. We find it and reflect. The cemetery also contains the confirmed remains of Rudyard Kipling’s son Jack, killed in September. Jack was 18, Harry was 17.

I leave a Canadian flag on a stick in front of a grave that says, “A Canadian Soldier of the Great War”.

We drive to where the frontlines were. Transmission powerlines cross the area, the fields are ready for planting. We stop at Quarry Cemetery, the burial site of Queen Elizabeth’s uncle. I was hoping to find a grave of a Sherwood Forester, but afterwards I find out that the hundreds of remains were recovered in the 1920’s and transferred back to Dud Alley. ?We drive 100 meters onward, stop, and I step out onto the frontlines. I can’t image what it was like in 1915.

It’s time to head for Belgium, a scant 37 kilometers away.

We arrive in no time in Ypres, our destination, pulling in through the Lille Gate. The place is packed with Brits, here to celebrate Victory in Europe day.